By GustavoLeao / 02:31, 4 July 2009 / Star Trek: Nemesis

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Asian Pacific Arts posted a new interview with Star Trek actor John Cho (Sulu) and here are few excerpts.

APA: Catching up to Star Trek, you were talking about the folks at Trekmovie.com (which I thought was a fantastic interview), and one of the things you mentioned was that you felt like you were in a bit of a professional funk prior to landing the Sulu role. I'm wondering if you could talk a little about that.

JC: I was not caring much, and I couldn't recall a time prior to that, where I didn't care that much. I was getting scripts and not that interested. I was going to auditions on occasion and blowing them essentially, because I was coming in unprepared. I was just not very interested in material that was coming my way, and I was a little worried about myself, you know? And Star Trek came along. I just had to have it. More than anything else, it just reignited my interest in acting. 

APA: How so?

JC: It was different content-wise. For me, I was going on this comic path, and it was easy to break out of that, there was stuff available. But I was just in a rut. Maybe it was very temporary, but I wasn't very excited.

My career has been mostly movies that I couldn't see when I was a child, and I think maybe that was part of why I liked Star Trek. It was about pleasing the kid, the young John Cho. And I'd always wanted to do something set in space and it was a childhood fantasy but it was also one of my political goals as an Asian American actor, to do something set in space, because I couldn't do a Western as an Asian American, and the Western was a real cinematic goal for me. So Star Trek was perfect -- the frontier. So there was that, and it probably had something to do with the historical nature of the franchise. Being connected to something bigger than the project was important to me. It just came along, and it struck all these nerves I didn't know were there, or that I wasn't particularly aware of, and I got really passionate about it. And then working methodology-wise it was different. It was less about learning lines, and more about how I carried myself. The physical training was completely new to me. I didn't know how to play Sulu, but once we got into the physical training, it didn't really matter. The way I stood became him, and then I just stopped thinking about it afterwards and just learned my lines. It was just something different, and I needed that.

APA: You talked about how the franchise is bigger than the movie, and this is something that Trek, more than almost any other cultural touchstone, really embodies. It also means that for anyone who steps into these iconic roles, this is something that theoretically, or quite likely, will be part of your career from this point until the end of days. I'm wondering if that's something you had thought much about. Are you going to be up for the convention runs?

JC: Yeah, there was some thought about that, but not much actually. I just didn't think too much about it, and I didn't think about the ramifications. But as we went around the world promoting it, I got more of an idea just how big the thing is. I had no idea, really. I was completely in the dark on how big it was.

APA: And now that you've seen the size of it, what are your impressions?

JC: It's a system of thinking about the world that's more important to people than I thought. I thought of it as -- and this is how I think of science fiction in general -- as a way of almost musing about our world, via setting up certain narrative conditions. And Star Trek is less musing and more philosophy. And maybe more than philosophy. Maybe a world view. So they're passionate. They're very passionate. The other thing I had forgotten was how many generations it covers. It's been around for a while, and now that we have ten-year-olds watching it, it has really widened its fan base to every make and model there is.

APA: You've mentioned before that part of your interest in playing Sulu was partially premised on your admiration of George Takei. I'm wondering if you could talk more about how you saw him as an actor or a public figure.

JC: I was introduced to Star Trek when I was a kid, not particularly paying attention to actors. It was more just that feeling of, there's an Asian guy on television. And then not being disappointed. Actually being happy about what he was doing. It was just one of the few bright spots in my childhood in terms of watching television. There are so many times you call in everybody from the other room, and you're watching, and you end up groaning, because [the actor] ends up doing a ridiculous accent or playing a stereotype, and so many of those moments ended up in disappointment. But not with Star Trek. So, to me, maybe there was some symbolism in there for me, just connecting my career with something that was really positive for my youth.

APA: After the casting had come through, did you guys talk about the character at all?

JC: I kind of felt instinctively that even though I wanted to be connected to that character, I didn't want to be connected to that performance, per se. That's kind of actor's respect. We don't ask each other what we're doing. I wouldn't have asked Chris Pine what he was doing for Kirk. You just kind of see what happens and react to it. I think to me, it was a bit of the same thing for someone who had played the character. But I wrote a letter to George and I wanted to connect to him as a person and see where that led. And we knew each other through East West Players. It was just great. Mostly, I was really nervous, and that served to ally my nerves a little bit. He was very cool and offered me some advice. And in a weird way, I had kind of forgotten about [Gene] Roddenberry. I thought about the show and the characters, but I had forgotten about the creator. And [Takei] reminded me of the vision behind the show and some of Roddenberry's goals, and that was useful. So we talked more about that stuff than character.

The full extensive interview is here.